Shane Montgomery: College student missing from Pennsylvania Found

UPDATE 1/5/14 – The ME has confirmed the body was Shane. Philadelphia’s mayor says his death has been ruled an accident, and they will look into improving safety along the waterfront.

UPDATE: 1/3/14 – Police have not confirmed that the body that was found in the Schuylkill River is Shane’s until they get a confirmation from the medical examiner, but the family do believe it is him and have reported it as such on the Help Find Shane Montgomery Facebook page.

UPDATE 12/22/14 – The family of a Philadelphia college student who disappeared early Thanksgiving morning said Sunday that police divers had found his keys in the Schuylkill River.

UPDATE 12/11/14 – Supposedly, a surveillance video showing Shane leaving the area of a Manayunk pub and walking toward a bridge over the Manayunk Canal has been found.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, sources said the video shows Montgomery heading across Main Street shortly after 1:50 a.m., when he left Kildare’s Irish Pub, walking toward a footpath over the canal. That footpath opens onto an isolated parking lot on a thin wedge of land that sits between the canal and a steep, unguarded bluff over the Schuylkill River.

Previous story:

Shane Montgomery, 21, a West Chester University student has been missing since Nov. 26. He was last seen at Kildare’s Bar on Main Street in Manayunk. Manayunk is a historic neighborhood in the northwestern section of the city of Philadelphia, Penn.

Shane went to Kildare’s with some friends and around 1:45 a.m., Shane tripped over a stool and was escorted from Kildare’s, according to his mother. The last ping from his cellphone was sent less than an hour later, about 2:38 a.m. at CVS.

I have heard about this happening many times before where a bartender or bouncer will tell a patron to go because they have had too much to drink and are forced out the door.

Many times when we are drinking we are not using our best judgement and in this case, it would have been a good idea for Shane to have called his friends and he was outside or to take a cab. It also would have been a class-act if Kildare’s had asked if he was alone or not and when they found out he was with friends, could have gone to the friends and told them he needed to leave.

I don’t think it is a good idea to send anyone out into the night alone after they have been drinking and the weather in the east has been very cold.

I have seen many times when a bartender will call a cab for someone, and then when the cabbie shows up at the bar, tell the patron to go with the cab.

Many bar business are held responsible if they serve someone who has already had enough to drink, but it wouldn’t hurt for them to continue that responsibility and create a policy that a patron is put into a cab or matched up with who they came with and is taken home.

He is described as a 5’11” tall, about 130 pounds with short brown hair and green eyes. He has a tattoo of a Celtic cross on his shoulder blade. Montgomery was last seen wearing a gray button-down shirt, blue jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt and black sneakers.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Valentino, of the Northwest Detective Division at (215) 686-3353 or 3354.